Daily Quiz for August 4, 2008

Central Pacific Railroad. The Central Pacific Railroad started the ambitious, unprecedented project of building a railway from California through the Sierra Nevada. In the words of historian Stephen Ambrose, the Sierra Nevada range was: &#171too big, too snowy, too steep, too rugged, too extensive, too formidable ever to be crossed easily.» No one had ever attempted such a feat through any group of mountains in America–or Europe or Asia. But Charles Crocker and his partners in the Central Pacific were determined to try. Built in large measure due to resourceful Chinese immigrant labor, the Central Pacific's railway succeeded in an engineering marvel.